


Nothing You Can Say To Make Me Change

by aron_kristina



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Community: holmestice, Drugs, Gen, Mental Illness, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-02
Updated: 2011-07-02
Packaged: 2017-10-20 23:02:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/218043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aron_kristina/pseuds/aron_kristina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock sees the world all too clearly and Mycroft worries about him. Constantly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing You Can Say To Make Me Change

**Author's Note:**

  * For [venturous1](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=venturous1).



> Note that this fic deals with suicide attempts.
> 
> Written for the summer solstice round at holmestice.  
> Beta-read by the awesome blue_eyed_1987. All remaining faults are my own. Comments and concrit welcome.  
> Title is from "Goodbye Cruel World" by Pink Floyd.

Sherlock remembers being seventeen. He remembers all of his ages, unfortunately. He can make himself forget useless facts, but some things are too ingrained in his mind that he can’t forget them.

*

When Sherlock is seventeen he tries to kill himself for the first time. He thinks of it as the first time, because even though he hasn’t made a conscious and proper try after that there is nothing to say he won’t.

It is rather melodramatic, all in all. He has stolen some of mummy’s sleeping pills, and downs them with some wine (a very expensive bottle, not that he could tell the difference) before going out into the grounds and laying down to wait for sleep, and the cold to kill him. He’s wearing a suit, and a black tie, funeral clothes, and he’s washed up and done his hair. No point in being an unwashed corpse.

The voices are excited, chattering away too fast for Sherlock to hear.

It’s cold, for a while, and then his limbs grow heavy, and he loses the grip on the wine bottle. He doesn’t spill any on his clothes, and he manages to arrange the bottle to his satisfaction before closing his eyes and giving in to the darkness and the quiet.

*

He wakes up in a hospital bed, of course. That’s the thing about suicide attempts, they fail. He is cold enough to shiver, and he is tired enough to go back to sleep instead of screaming. The voices in his head are quiet enough that he can sleep without being disturbed.

*

When he wakes up the next time he is angry. Angry with himself for being such a drama queen, for choosing something that appeased his sense of aesthetics instead of being practical. Angry at whoever had found him, angry at the hospital staff for not letting him die. He is hooked up to an IV, and he tears it out and starts to move out of the bed, but there are people holding him down. Of course, he is still on suicide watch. He snarls at them, not having any words with which to express himself. Then a familiar voice.

“Sherlock, calm down!”

Sherlock stares at Mycroft, and he can read in Mycroft’s face that he must be looking crazy. He can’t care. He clears his throat silently and spits in Mycroft’s face.

Whatever drugs they’ve given him are working, and he is once again slipping under. It’s nice, actually, everything stops, and he has managed to make his hatred known before succumbing.

*

Of course he wakes up again, because nothing good will last. Mycroft is there, sitting in a chair, looking so fucking stuck up.

“Who was it?” Sherlock asks. Mycroft raises an eyebrow.

“Who found me?” Sherlock refuses to say ‘saved me’, because he feels condemned.

“I did,” Mycroft says, cool as anything.

“Why did you ruin it?” Sherlock asks, spits. He’s starting to shake with anger now, Mycroft did it, the bastard, he ruined everything. The voices are back and they’re all shouting at him.

“Sherlock,” Mycroft says, and he sounds worried, so very worried, it would probably convince Sherlock if he didn’t know better, but he does. Mycroft only wants to destroy all of his plans because he can’t stand the thought of Sherlock being better than him at something.

“Why did you ruin it?” Sherlock screams, and he never repeats himself but in this case it’s warranted.

“I didn’t want you to die,” Mycroft says, and Sherlock can accept that as the truth.

“No, because then I’d have won,” he says, and Mycroft makes a face. He’s so very good at pretending to feel something for Sherlock, but Sherlock knows the truth. He can see right through Mycroft.

*

Sherlock gets to go home, after a long evaluation and talking to five different psychiatrists. They give him antidepressants that Sherlock doesn’t eat, and he’s forced to go back to talk to them first twice a week and then once. Manipulating them is so easy, soon he doesn’t have to go at all. Everything returns to normal once again, and Sherlock soon finds out which drugs will make his head go quiet without affecting his ability to think.

***

Sherlock was a child once. He knows this, because no one is born fully formed, but he can’t quite remember it. When he tries it’s like pictures and feelings instead of proper memories. He knows this is due to how the human brain develops, and in his case because he had not yet figured out the technique for perfect recall, but it’s still disturbing, this great big pile of sensation, which can’t even be put in chronological order. He can’t delete it either, but not for lack of trying. Every time he thought he succeeded there was something that brought it back.

Worst of all is remembering Mycroft, that he used to play with Sherlock, and be nice to him. That he started so early to try to worm his way into Sherlock’s head, just to gain advantage. He doesn’t like thinking about it, how vulnerable he must have been then, how he couldn’t have seen through Mycroft’s deception. How he can’t even now be sure that Mycroft hadn’t implanted something in his brain when he was still susceptible.

***

When Sherlock wakes up from his first overdose Mycroft is there. It’s remarkably similar to waking from his suicide attempt, but he’s not as angry. After all, it hadn’t been planned this time, even though it’s always there in the back of Sherlock’s mind, that he cam die from the drugs, and maybe that was what makes it so good. He is on some sort of sedative, probably to make the detox easier, and it makes everything fuzzy. It’s actually rather nice, being all fuzzy and quiet.

Still, Sherlock glares at Mycroft from his hospital bed and refuses to talk. There is nothing to say, after all. Mycroft wants him clean because a victory over a Sherlock who is high will not be a real victory.

When Mycroft tries to speak Sherlock turns around and puts his pillow over his head.

*

In rehab, that first time, he gets his diagnosis. Sociopath. He’s still not sure what he says to get it, since he deletes the lies when he gets out, but he cherishes it. It’s a good diagnosis, something to lean on and throw in the faces of people, even if it’s wrong. He is after all _quite_ able to read text on psychiatry himself, and if he wants to give himself a diagnosis it would be bipolar, or schizophrenic. He doesn’t need to give himself one though, because he knows he’s healthy. Wanting to die must after all be the natural conclusion to actually seeing the state of the world and not deluding yourself into thinking it’s better than it is. Everyone would want to die if they knew what he knew, if they heard what he heard. It’s not his fault the rest of the world is too stupid to see that.

***

Sherlock’s second overdose is planned. He has done a lot of research and found an abandoned building which he can get to without being seen by the CCTV cameras, calculated the dose required and made sure he would be comfortable. He doesn’t leave a note, of course, and he doesn’t doll himself up, everything to make sure Mycroft won’t notice. He does, of course, and comes swooping in the door like some ridiculous superhero just as Sherlock is drawing the heroin into the needle. There is no point in continuing after that, and Sherlock lets himself be taken away to rehab again, where they sedate him for the worst of his withdrawal.

*

Waking up with Mycroft looking disapproving seems like a familiar experience by now. Sherlock can’t even be bothered to be angry.

“How did you know?” he asks. It’s the only thing he can’t understand.

“Do you know what day it was?” Mycroft asks, and Sherlock thinks back. Tries to remember. March 23rd. The same day he had gone out in the garden to die. Damn! He must have subconsciously picked the same day, and his brain had been too influenced by drugs to notice. He smiles thinly.

“You still won’t leave me alone to die in peace,” he says, and Mycroft makes one of those faces that are supposed to show empathy, or hurt or some other emotion he’s never felt.

“No, Sherlock, and I wish you would get help. Take the medicine they give you,” Mycroft says, and Sherlock snorts.

“That they try to poison me with, you mean. Now, leave, I’m tired.” He turns his back to Mycroft, and eventually Mycroft leaves.

***

Meeting John Watson is interesting. He has resigned himself to the fact that the most he can hope for is managing to forget death for a while, and John makes him forget for longer periods of time. John expects things from him, and gives him things in return. Not something Sherlock ever thought he’d have, but still. Something interesting. John also doesn’t pretend to care, doesn’t seem to mind that much that Sherlock is trying to get himself killed half the time. John makes things more quiet.

Meeting Moriarty is even more interesting. Here is someone who matches him, someone who has chosen a different path. Moriarty makes things much louder, but it doesn’t matter, because for the first time it’s happy screaming.

*

Sherlock is underneath the water. He knows the bomb has gone off, he can hear it, distorted through the water, the building falling apart around him. He looks up and sees John at the surface, and something in him lets go, lets him open his mouth and breathe in the water. Lets himself sink.

***

When he wakes up, in a hospital bed, he sees Mycroft. Sherlock smiles tiredly, because there is nothing else to do, and vows silently that he will get his revenge.


End file.
